NSA builds its own search engine to share communication records with other agencies

The National Security Agency is secretly supplying personal data to 23 US government agencies using its own Google-like search engine designed to share more than 850 billion phone and email records. The covert program was revealed in classified documents provided to The Intercept by NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

The search engine, known as ICREACH, is aimed at "worldwide intelligence targets" but also appears to provide access to "millions of records on American citizens who have not been accused of any wrongdoing," according to The Intercept. The search tool was built with the intention of becoming the largest system for internally sharing secret surveillance records in the country - capable of processing two to five billion new records every day.

It generates a portrait of communication patterns associated with a particular piece of information, like a phone number or e-mail address attached to a person. The engine apparently does not have a "direct relationship" to a previously disclosed NSA database that stores information on phone calls by millions of Americans, which is allowed under the USA Patriot Act.

The Director of National Intelligence acknowledged the existence of such a search engine, noting that sharing information had become "a pillar of the post-9/11 intelligence community" as part of an effort to prevent valuable intelligence from being "stove-piped in any single office or agency."

A US official familiar with the system is quoted as saying by The Intercept that while “it enables the sharing of certain foreign intelligence metadata,” ICREACH is “not a repository (and) does not store events or records.”